On January 20 we gathered at Jan’s to share our poems about clothing. As Jan says,
Poetry has always been drawn to the subject of dress and undress…
Thus it’s the topic I’ve chosen
be it tunics or robes
or blouses of silk
pantaloons, trousers or lieder hosen.
Poets, it seems, have indeed had a lot to say about what we wear. If it weren’t so, our meeting would not have run so long. We almost didn’t have enough time to give each contribution its due.
Anonymous – Although this poem, which criticizes Black people for buying clothing from racist companies, has been attributed to Maya Angelou, her Web site claims she has no affiliation with it.
Hamlet Act I. Scene III
Polonius to Laertes
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
I was watching last evening’s episode of CSI when right there in the middle of the show was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Arrow and the Song. Imagine my surprise! So I had to look it up.
Here’s the description from the episode entitled “Ending Happy.”
Moments later, an old man named Milton calls them [CSIs] into his trailer, which sits next to Happy’s. “Somebody shot my wife,” he says, pointing to a bloody arrow sticking out of a wall portrait of his late spouse. Milton quotes a Longfellow poem, “The Arrow and the Song,” but Nick mistakes it for simple ramblings of an old man and brushes it off. He’s focused on the flight path the arrow would have taken, directly over the blood drops outside. The missile was fired from the tool shed. On the ground is another arrow, shot into the dirt. Back inside, Sara gives Milton something to smile about, completing the words of his poem from memory. “Keep the faith,” she tells him, and he gives his late wife’s photo a loving wink.
***Update on October 25, 2007. In response to John Smith’s comment below, I found the misquote on YouTube. You can see it here. I tried to insert it with a comment, but the video reference doesn’t work in the comment field…
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